Some thoughts on NT Wright’s Rutherford House Lecture, August 2003. I have little disagreement with much of the lecture, and it clarified a number of things for me. Wright’s views on justification, however, continue to puzzle me at a number of points. Here’s an attempt to clarify my (or NTW’s) confusions. 1) Like John Murray, he says that “call” is the biblical term for conversion. And “faith is itself the first fruit of the Spirit’s call.” Great. 2) But then... Read more
Steiner notes that, following the Renaissance, European drama operated under the shadows of neo-classical and Elizabethan dramatic practice, the former “closed” and rigidly adhering to Aristotelian criteria, the other open and experimental. He discusses the theory of Thomas Rymer (a neo-classicist) at some length, concluding that the controversies that Rymer expounded upon in the seventeenth century have haunted drama ever since. Rymer’s theory, however, rests on equivocation. On the one hand, he contrasts Greek drama and Shakespearean in terms of... Read more
George Steiner in his Death of Tragedy describes the “Shakespearean difference” as mainly due to Shakespeare’s avoidance of fascination with Hellenic models: “The neo-classic view [which rigidified Aristotelian conceptions of tragedy] expresses a growing perception of the miracle of Greek drama. This perception was fragmentary. There were few translations of Aeschylus, and the plays of Euripides were known mainly in the versions of Seneca. Renaissance scholars failed to realize, moreover, that Aristotle was a practicel critic whose judgements are relevant... Read more
There’s some intriguing cross-fertilization going on between the two sabbath healings in Luke 13-14. In 13, Jesus heals the woman who has been bent double for 18 years, and in ch 14 Jesus heals a man with dropsy. In both, the healing is scrutinized critically by the Pharisees, and Jesus rebukes them by using brief parables drawn from animal husbandry. Both also end with humiliation for the Pharisees: that is explicit in 13:17, and implicit in the silence of 14:6.... Read more
Another insight from Sourvinou-Inwood: After offering a reconstruction of the development of tragedy from the hymns of the TRAGODOI through “prototragedy” (which introduced mimetic elements), she gives a brief review of the development of comedy. At the end, she contrasts the two both as regards their ritual contexts and their respective presentation of the gods: “while tragedy arose in the context of the establishment of order that began with the XENISMOS of Dionysos, and was completed with the processions and... Read more
Discussing the religious origins of Athenian tragedy in her recent Tragedy and Athenian Religion , Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood first examines the early forms of the festival of the City Dionysia. She points out that “tragedy” comes from tragos , a male goat, and that the first hints of tragedy arise in the hymns that accompanied the sacrifice of a goat at the City Dionysia. At the center of the whole festival performance was the welcome of Dionysus (symbolized by a procession... Read more
Also in the Nov 2003 IJST is the first installment of Robert Jenson’s Maurice Lectures (University of London), entitled “Christ as Culture.” Among other things, Jenson criticizes HR Niebuhr’s framing of the issue as “Christ and culture” by noting that “Christ” (Messiah) is meaningful within an already-existing culture, that of Israel, so that all questions of Christianity and culture are questions about the relationship between two cultures; insists that the church is herself a culture, and pushes that a step... Read more
Nicholas Healy has a useful article on the notion of “practice” in recent ecclesiology in the Nov 2003 issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology . He begins by distinguishing two trends within recent ecclesiology, both of which focus on the church’s practices. The first, which he associates with Kathryn Tanner’s Theories of Culture is concerned to “bring to discourse” the practices of the church or to examine things that churches and congregations take for granted so that they... Read more
Nicholas Healy has a useful article on the notion of “practice” in recent ecclesiology in the Nov 2003 issue of the International Journal of Systematic Theology . He begins by distinguishing two trends within recent ecclesiology, both of which focus on the church’s practices. The first, which he associates with Kathryn Tanner’s Theories of Culture is concerned to “bring to discourse” the practices of the church or to examine things that churches and congregations take for granted so that they... Read more
Eucharistic meditation, January 4: Haggai’s prophecy encourages the people of Israel to devote themselves to building the house of the Lord, in spite of opposition and the hostility of the nations. Among the judgments the Lord brings is a drought which leads to a famine: there is no dew, and therefore there is no grain, wine, or oil. Though this passage is talking about a literal drought and literal famine, the prophet describes this situation in a sacramentally charged fashion.... Read more
Leithart
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